The Right Stuff
by Bella Winter Rose
Summary: It's months after AJBAC...Max is still gone. Before Asha has a chance to dig her nails into Logan, a new face appears: a woman who might change Logan's world completely and give him a reason to live. Ch 10 Up! AU ML.
1. Movin' On Up

            "Yo! Kim! Where do you want this?"

            Kim Addams looked up from rummaging through her purse and shouted back, "With all the other boxes, stupid!"

            Cal, Kim's older brother, grunted as he dragged the biggest box out of the world's oldest U-Haul that their mother had bought pre-Pulse and carried it to the stack of at least a half-dozen more boxes. Kim continued emptying the contents of her baby-blue faux Prada, searching desperately for the keys to her new apartment in Foggle Towers.

            She was excited about this new place and excited about Seattle. All her life she had been cute little blonde Kimber-Leigh Addison of Darby, Idaho. But Kim was one of those people who never liked to stay in one place for very long. 

As soon as she could drive, she dyed her hair brown, cut and curled it, changed her name and hightailed it out of Darby and went to Hollywood, California where she was almost totally convinced she could be an actress. All she took with her was her one good friend, Gabrielle Finch, and nothing but four hundred dollars and one suitcase each. The only downer was that Gabrielle, once they had arrived in Hollywood and saw the cheap apartment Kim had gotten them, floored it back to Darby, taking her share of the money and Kim's "baby", a 1999 white Toyota, with her. 

            It was a long and slow process but over a period of three years, Kim had gotten enough money to buy a new car—though she missed her Toyota "like nobody's business", as she usually said—and go back to Idaho, only leave six months later, this time heading to Seattle.

            "You are staying right here, young lady!" Kim's mother exploded as she watched her 19-year-old daughter speed off in a blue Chevrolet with the U-Haul attached and the CD player blasting Madonna's "What It Feels Like For A Girl". 

Kim never looked back.

Her only connection to her home was Calvin, her older brother by four years. They were as close as brothers and sisters could get, though they were quite a pair—Kim was 20, delicate, barely five and a half feet tall and weighing in at 109. Though she was born with blond hair that was almost white, she was now a brunette, which made her feel "sexier". Cal, age 24, was very muscular, well-built and athletic—he made lifting some of the heaviest things as light as a feather—at six foot eight and 165 pounds, still with downy blond hair and a smile that made several girls melt. Kim always thought she had so many friends because they were all in love with Cal.

Kim had found Foggle Towers in the newspaper only a few weeks ago. Up until this point she had been living in the Americana Motel in Sector 9. As soon as she saw the building, she wanted to live here badly. It was a little pricey but she was due for a promotion at the Harbor Lights Hospital where she currently held a position. When the landlord dropped the keys to her new apartment in her hand, she jumped for joy and hugged him.

Now it was the very same key she was searching for as she dumped the contents of her purse onto the concrete. 

"Found it!" she exclaimed, holding up the two small brass keys dangling from a jump ring. 

"Good job," Cal replied. "_Now will you help me with __your boxes?"_

"Yeah, sure," Kim grumbled as she put the keys in her pocket and stuffed everything back into her purse—tissues, lipstick holders, loose change and maxi-pads were scattered everywhere. She yelped as she scraped her finger against the rough pavement and immediately stuck the wounded nail in her mouth as it drew blood. 

"Kim, you're such a mess," Cal said sympathetically. He knelt to gather his little sister's items back into her purse as she nursed her wound. 

"Thank you, Calvin, I'm aware of that," Kim replied, her finger still in her mouth and standing. She looked upwards toward Foggle Towers. She squinted against the harsh sunlight—a rare treat in Seattle. "God. It's so damn big. You'd think structures like this would have been the first to go during the Pulse."

"Even I'm ashamed of our economy," Cal winced. He held out Kim's purse to her and she slung it through the open passenger window of her Chevy—her new baby, of course. 

"Why?" Kim asked as she sauntered into the U-Haul and grabbed two of the littlest boxes, stacked one on top of the other and carried them out. 

"Please, Kimmy," Cal sighed, sweat dripping from his brow as he lifted four boxes, each the size of a full-grown Great Dane and most likely twice as heavy. "People who live here were once rich snobs who ate caviar and drank with their pinkies in the air. What do you want to bet they all have Persian rugs and ten million dollars worth of electronics equipment?" He made his way inside the building and towards the elevator. Kim hurried to catch up.

"Well…I don't know," she said, helping Cal drag the boxes into the elevator when it arrived. She was awed at the size. It could easily fit all the contents of the U-Haul in one shot but was certain if they tried, the cables would snap.

"It's disgusting, Kimmy. These people are living in the lap of luxury while nearly fifty percent of the nation starves to death. The people in pre-Pulse India probably had it better than we do."

"Oh, please, Cal. I'm sure that's not true."

"Trust me. You'd be surprised at the stuff I know."

"I'm surprised you know what you do now."

Cal scoffed and shook his head. "What floor?"

Kim's eyes rolled up to the ceiling in thought. "Thirty-four," she said when it came to her. "Almost at the top!"

"Cool," Cal replied, amazed with his sister's fascination of heights. As a kid, she went nuts on rides the hurled her all the way up in the air. On Ferris wheels she got a kick out of rocking the cart until she nearly fell out. For her seventeenth birthday, she went bungee jumping. It was, on the other hand, one of Cal's greatest fears.

"I hope I have lots of windows," she said as they started to go up.

There was silence while the elevator made it's way towards Kim's future. Then, all of a sudden, Kim gave Cal's shoulder a punch.

"What was that for?" asked Cal, who had barely felt it but was impressed at the red mark the punch had left.

"Calling me a rich snob who eats caviar and drinks with my pinky in the air."

Cal shot his little sister a smile, who returned it with a scowl. "I was kidding, Kimmy."

"No you weren't. You said that the people who live here are rich snobs who eat caviar and drink with their pinkies in the air. I remember it like it was yesterday."

"It was _today, silly."_

"Well, I'm not gonna be like that," Kim swore. "I'm gonna hold wild parties every night where drinking and tawdry sex takes place in every room."

"Quite an ambition."

"Oh, that's not all, my friend. I'm gonna hire the chicks from that old _Coyote Ugly movie Mom liked to serve up the drinky-poos and then dance on the coffee table and set it on fire."_

"I think your landlord may have a problem with that."

"Well, I'll invite him and have Piper Perabo give him a lap dance. Then maybe he'll forgive me."

Cal roared with laughter as the elevator doors opened up to Kim's floor. They dragged the four boxes—six if one counted the two small ones Kim had retrieved.

"Here we are," Kim said, stopping about three yards from the elevator, which was quite a trip with six hundred pounds worth of boxes. "Number G2-69."

"Look, Kim, your favorite number," Cal roared as he leaned against the wall.

"Very funny," she scowled. She withdrew the keys from her pocket and twirled them on her index finger.

Cal apologized. "Come on, now, Kimmy. Open this mother up. I wanna see what this place looks like."

"Okay, okay…here goes…" Kim felt a rush of excitement run up her spine as she stuck the key into the door. She turned it…felt the click…and opened the door to her new life. 


	2. The Trillion Dollar Car

A/N: Yes, I know this doesn't have anything to do with Dark Angel…so far. Trust me. I'm getting there…

"Whoa!" 

Kim couldn't have said it any better herself. It was just as she had remembered it when she went to see it only last week. A bathroom, two bedrooms, a kitchen with all the trimmings and a living room. Wood paneled walls, beautiful hardwood floors and big windows everywhere. She went crazy over how her shoes clicked against the floor. It made her feel elegant for some reason. The windows let the sunlight pour in. Kim couldn't wait to hang wind chimes and sun-catchers everywhere. 

"Oooh!" she squealed and did a few jumps up and down. "Bring the boxes in, Cal. Let's get to work."

"Yeah, yeah. I'm the one whose been doing all the work," Cal joked as he pushed all the boxes into the middle of the living room. "At least the wood floor makes it easy to slide these suckers."

"I wonder what my neighbors are like?" Kim wondered aloud as she removed her penknife from her pocket and sliced open a couple of the boxes once Cal un-stacked them.

"You already know what I think," Cal replied.

"I know more than I want to know," Kim sauntered to the window and realized she had left the U-Haul open. "Shit!" she swore and flew out of the room.

She fidgeted as the elevator made its way up and fidgeted as she stepped into it when it arrived and made her way down. She hoped and prayed no one had stolen anything. When it arrived, she nearly broker her finger jamming it into the button marked GF, for Ground Floor.

With the speed and efficiency, Kim closed and locked the U-Haul, making sure that everything was where it was. She still had her furniture to move in and she was already planning on buying a new desk, a computer and several other odds and ends, including two more couches and a nice-sized TV. Though with her salary, Kim knew it would be a great while before she acquired most of those items. She had already taken her bed and headboard from her bedroom in Idaho, her favorite armchair that was always kept in her room, and a second-hand couch that she had picked up at a flea market for fifty dollars. Kim had tried to clean it but eventually gave up when the stains still remained and instead bought a slipcover.

When Kim returned to the elevator, she noticed a blonde girl standing there, waiting for the elevator as well. She was short and delicate, much like Kim herself. Her hair, a soft gold, was also short and Kim thought the style in which she had cut it looked a bit like Rachael Leigh Cook in another old movie, _Josie and the Pussycats—chin length and spiked out a bit._

"Hi!" Kim said perkily to the blonde, eager to make friends. "You live here?"

"No." 

The blonde's answer was sharp and cutting. Kim actually winced. 

"I'm Kim Addams," Kim stuck out her hand but the blonde stared at her as if Kim had showed her a dead rat.

"Asha." She continued to just stare ahead and not pay any attention to this girl.

"Oh. That's a cool name."

Asha shrugged. 

"So if you don't live here who are you visiting?"

"Why?" Asha, still in a cold voice, raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Kim inched back. "I, um, just moved here…I'm, er-uh, curious. Curious, is all."

"Logan Cale," Asha replied with an almost blissful sigh. "He's my b—he's a friend of mine."

"Oh, that's pretty cool."

The elevator finally arrived and Kim and Asha scrambled in. Kim sized up this girl. She wore sleek leather pants, a tight dark red v-neck shirt that showed off _all the right curves and a denim jacket. On her feet were snazzy-looking boots. Kim was only in jeans and old T-shirt she'd stolen from her mom with a scene from an old movie called the __Wizard of Oz on it with "Surrender Dorothy" written on top. A brown leather jacket with fringe on the sleeves, reminiscent of the 1970's, completed her laid-back look._

"So where does your friend live?" Kim asked innocently.

"Foggle Towers, obviously."

"Oops, my bad," Kim said. "I meant, what apartment?"

"H2-104." Asha stabbed the H2 button.

"Oh pretty cool…that would make us neighbors then. I'm in G2-69." To emphasize her point, Kim pressed the G2 button.

"Great."

Kim detected a note of sarcasm in Asha's voice. This little pixie blonde definitely had an attitude.

They rode almost the rest of the way up in silence. It was beginning to get uncomfortable for Kim so, against Asha's obvious yet non-vocal request to shut up, Kim continued to ask questions.

"Are you from Seattle?"

"How do you know Logan? How long have you known him?"

"Is he cute?"

"Is he single?"

"What's there to do for fun around here? Any floor parties?"

"Where can I get my drink on?"

Asha continued to either ignore Kim's questions (especially those about Logan) or give bland answers. It wasn't five minutes before Kim, who was voted most congenial in her eighth grade superlatives, began to take a hint. She sighed, defeated. When it reached floor G2, Kim stepped off the elevator. Before leaving, she turned to Asha and said,

"Listen, I'm sorry if I annoyed you. I'm just that kind of person, one who doesn't really know how to shut up, even when people don't want to hear my voice anymore. I don't know why. I'm kind of like Tara Reid in that one movie—"

Before Kim could finish her sentence, Asha pressed a button and the door closed, rudely cutting Kim off.

"Great," Kim said to herself as her first chance at a friend slipped from her fingers. "That's just great. Pixie's probably gonna badmouth my name all over the g.d. place now."

She stomped back to G2-69 in a huff, where she discovered Cal already unpacking some things in the kitchen and, at the same time, testing out the equipment.

"Made you a hotdog," Cal said with his mouth full. "I found em in a cooler in one of those monstrosities made out of cardboard."

"Thanks," Kim said, more gruff than she intended. She took out her anger on the rest of the boxes Cal hadn't unpacked, tearing into them with her pocket knife she always kept close at hand.

"Ouch," Cal commented as he watched his little sister go nuts slicing up boxes. "What's up with you? Someone steal your couch?"

"I just made a jackass out of myself on the elevator, that's what's up," Kim fiercely kicked the box and was ready to drive her pocket knife into the wood floor. 

"Yeah? What happened?"

"Ugh," Kim spat. "It was…stupid." She kicked the box again.

"You get so pissy over the little things."

"It's this chick that I met on the elevator," Kim sat on the wooden floor, Indian-style, and propped her head up in her hands. "She just totally blew me off, just…ugh, she was just so rude."

"What'd I tell ya? Rude, snobby people in this joint."

"She doesn't live here. She's visiting her rude, snobby boyfriend who lives over me. Logan Cale," she said his name with a mock English accent. "It sounds like a cross between a trillion dollar car and a racehorse."

Cal stifled a laugh. His baby sister could be quite a laugh riot when she wanted to be. "Well, car, racehorse or not, he's your neighbor," Cal pointed out. "So be aware of the fact he may come buy and borrow a cup of sugar or two eggs."

"Nah. He'd probably send his butler to do it."

Cal let out a belly laugh that made Kim want to laugh too. He gave her a brotherly kiss on the cheek. "You're the best, Kimmy. I think you're gonna do fine here."


	3. Nirvana and Good Wine

            By the time Cal and Kim had everything unpacked and arranged just the way Kim wanted it, it was dark outside. Cal had a long ride back home, so he left as soon as he could, but not without some food that Kim had thrown in a plastic bag for him to take with him "so he wouldn't have to worry about stopping for a bite."

            Thankfully, neither of them had run-ins with the "Blonde Bitch" during the remains of Kim's unpacking. In fact, Kim dreaded the day they would meet up again.

            She was a little lonely after he left. So Kim pulled on her favorite blue flannel pajamas and made herself a big bowl of mac and cheese—her favorite comfort food—and a glass of red wine—a going-away present from her crazy aunt Sonia, sat on her old couch and put on a Nirvana CD. Feeling at ease, she decided to go the extra mile and turn down the lights and lit some scented candles. She put her bowl down and closed her eyes, inhaling the subtle aroma of wax, peaches and vanilla. Kurt Cobain always managed to keep her at peace.

            Though it was peaceful for her, she must have disturbed something or someone because she heard knocking at the door.

            Angry that she was disturbed, she pulled on her leather slippers and grumbled her way to the front door. Ready to spit in the face of whoever disturbed, she opened up.

            Standing in her doorway was a man taller than she was but much shorter than Cal, with shaggy blonde hair, piercing blue eyes from behind glasses too small for his face and a short beard, sloppily trimmed. He wore clothes—baggy jeans and a sweatshirt—that were rumpled. If he wasn't in the building Kim could have easily mistaken him for a homeless person.

            "Can I help you?" she asked icily, hoping he wasn't going to ask her for spare change. When he didn't answer, Kim repeated her question. 

            "Um, hi," he said. He cleared his throat and blinked rapidly a couple of times. "Hi. Hi, there."

            "Listen, I'm a little busy right now," she said a little hurriedly. "Is there something I can do for you? 'Cause if not, Kurt Cobain waits for no woman, with the exception of Courtney Love, who was a dirty whore anyway."

            The man removed his glasses and put them in his pocket. "Um, my name's Logan…uh, Logan Cale. You are?"

            _This was Logan Cale? The trillion dollar racehorse?_ "Kim Addams," Kim said her name slowly and clearly. "Is that all you wanted to know?"

            "Yes. I mean, no!"

            "Well, what is it?" Kim was getting impatient.

            "Oh. Oh, well, I live above you and you were kind of playing your music a little loud and well, do you think you could lower it?"

            "I might."

            "I beg pardon?"

            "You tell your little girlfriend Asha to buck up her ideas and buck 'em up fast and then maybe I'll start lowerin' my music."

            "My girlfriend?"

            "Tiny blonde, frustrating, thinks 'hi' is a fifteen-syllable word? Asha? Or did she just make it up that you're her man?"

            "First of all, I'm not _anyone's_ man. Asha's just a friend of mine and—wait a minute," Logan stopped abruptly. "Since when am I sharing my personal life with someone I just met?"

            Kim cocked her head to one side. "I just have that kind of personality I guess." She bit her lip until she began to taste copper. 

            Logan began to stare at Kim until Kim began to nervously shift from foot to foot.

            "Would you like to come in for some wine?" she asked, trying to break the tension.

            With an awkwardly stiff smile, Logan nodded. "Sure, thanks." He strode in coolly, as if it was he who lived here, not Kim.

            Kim closed the door after him. "I hope you like red."

            "Red is fine," Logan waved a hand. Like gentleman, he waited for Kim to sit down before he himself sat.

            She got a second wine glass out of her kitchen cabinet and then plopped down on the couch with an "oomph!" and popped open the bottle of wine. Carefully, she poured Logan a glass and refilled hers. She lowered her stereo until Kurt Cobain's sexy voice could almost no longer be heard. As she handed him the glass, the question that had been dancing on Logan's tongue ever since he laid eyes on his neighbor popped out:

            "Have you ever…been to Wyoming?"

            "Wyoming?" Kim giggled. "Um. No, I haven't. Dear God, what brought that up?"

            Logan blinked in surprise. "No? Are you sure?"

            "Honey, I think I would remember being in Wyoming."

            "When were you born?"

            "Li'l old me? 2000. I was my parents' millennium baby," Kim laughed. When Logan didn't, she quickly took a gulp of her wine to shut herself up. "I was born in Idaho, though. Stayed there until I couldn't breathe and went to California. To become an actress."

            "Ah. Did you make it?"

            "Oh yeah," Kim said sardonically. "I bumped ol' Nicole Kidman right off the g.d marquee. I dated Ben Affleck and dumped him for Mehkai Pfeiffer."

            "And how did that work out?" Logan forced back a smile.

            "Pfft. He left me for some hot chick with much bigger boobs. Britney Spears."

            Logan gave a tight-lipped smile.

            "I'm just kidding," Kim sighed. "I, uh, I kinda bombed in Hollywood. I did some cheap B movies, one or two snuff films and a…a soft porn." She blushed ever so slightly, but whether it was from she had drunk too much wine or the embarrassment of doing pornography.

            "Seriously?" Logan raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

            She shrugged. "Girl's gotta make a living."

            "So what brings you to Seattle?"

            "Besides a maniacal mother and absolutely nothing waiting for me back in Idaho?" Kim blew a few stray curls out of her face. "I hear the life of crime here pays pretty big."

            This time Logan laughed. Unbeknownst to Kim, this was the first time he had laughed in nearly a year. Not since…He sighed and tried to forget.

They were silent for a few minutes with nothing but Kurt Cobain whispering from the speakers:__

_I'll take advantage while, you hang me out to dry.  
But I can't see you every night, free.  
I standing in your line, I do hope you have the time.  
I do pick a number too, I do keep a date with you._

            His words sounded almost prophetic. Logan must have noticed too, because his next comment was,

            "Interesting taste in music you have."

            "Nirvana? Yeah, I guess. Kurt Cobain was my god for a number of years. I had a shrine in my bedroom. I have a weakness for all things B.P."

            "B.P.?"

            "Before the Pulse. Nirvana, _The Wizard of Oz_, Tara Reid…"

            "I'm familiar with all of the above," Logan explained. "I'm in my thirties."

            "No shit?"

"I shit you not. I'm a Yale graduate."

Kim couldn't believe her ears. "Get outta here. When were you born?"

            "1988…Hell, I remember when Kurt Cobain died and when Tara Reid was engaged to Carson Daly."

            "Wow. I never would have guessed that you were thirty-three. You look twenty-three, twenty-seven tops."

            Logan laughed again, "You know that old saying, you're only as old as you feel?"

            "Yeah."

            "Well, that's me," he joked. "Peter Pan syndrome."

            "I live by the old mantra, 'act your shoe size'," Kim laughed. She sighed and put her glass down. "So tell me," she said a little more seriously. "Now that we know each other a little better, will you please tell me what stick is shoved up Asha's ass and how do I extract it?"

            "Ohh…" Logan put his glass down, too. "Well, she's competitive, Asha is. She doesn't like it when outsiders interfere with her business. She's a little bossy, likes to take charge. Likes to feel big, y'know?"

            "So why did she totally bite my head off today? PMS City or what?"

            "Or what. I don't get into that. Even with my old girlfriend I didn't—" Logan stopped short. His hand flew to his mouth as if he had bitten his lip and trying to salvage the bleeding. 

            "You what?" Kim bounced a little on her couch and waited for Logan to finish.

            "I…I have to go." Logan got up and started towards the door. 

            "Wait!" Kim started after him but her socked feet on the wooden floor did not mix well and she slipped and fell. "Logan!"

            By the time she scrambled to her feet, he was gone with the slam of the door. 

            _Damn it_, she thought._ Two down, none to go. Will I ever have friends in this place?_


	4. Un Día en La Vida

            When Logan returned to his apartment, he had to lie down. The shock of seeing Kim had shaken him to the point of a breakdown. 

            _She looked so much like Max…the hair…the attitude…the eyes, oh God the eyes…her petite figure…it's Max all over again…a doppelganger._

Without bothering to take his exo off, he sat on the couch and stared into space until his vision blurred and all went dark. 

It's not fair…why would she do that? Why? I loved her… 

The last thing he saw etched behind his eyelids was Max's lifeless body on the woodland floor, her pretty brunette head bouncing off a rock like a deflated basketball.

After Logan's sudden and confusing departure, Kim blew out her candles, turned off the stereo and retired to bed herself. The familiarity of her bedroom, specifically decorated to mirror the one back in Idaho, was comforting to her; more than mac & cheese, more that peach candles, more than Kurt Cobain's guitar riff that sounded like nirvana itself.

_What a strange place this is,_ Kim thought to herself as she crawled under the covers._ Between wicked blonde witches and rich guys who like to look like beggars._

Kim awoke the next morning to the sound of the telephone. She shuffled out of bed and answered with a groggy, "'Lo?"

"Morning, sunshine,"  Cal's cheery voice said on the other line, calling all the way from Nevada, where he lived. "How was your first night in Tiffany's?"

"Strange," Kim admitted as she made herself some precious coffee. "I met that guy…Logan Cale."

"Ohh…the Blonde Bitch's boy toy?" Cal joked.

"Yeah." Kim giggled. "He's an interesting fellow, I'll tell you that."

"Oh?"

"He kept asking me about…Wyoming, I think."

"Why?"

"I don't know. We had some wine and he just acted really weird."

"Where did you get wine?"

"Crazy Aunt Sonia."

"Oh…so Logan acted a little weird. So what? You don't have to see him again, that's the beauty of it."

"Well, I guess." Kim swung her eyes towards the ceiling. She sighed and shook her head. "Listen, Cal, I gotta get going. I have to be at work in an hour and a half."

"Have fun," Cal said. "And good luck. I have a feeling you'll be needing it."

Harbor Lights Hospital was a good-sized medical practice that had a busy waiting room where, in most cases, you had to take a number, and a full personnel of only twenty-seven: seven doctors and twelve nurses (though only four doctors and six nurses were on duty at a time), four on the maintenance crew and four in the lab. They ran out of rubber gloves on several occasions, free coffee for the staff was an oddity (most ran on pep pills and ambition). Clean-up was a bitch every night thanks to a cracked concrete floor stained daily with blood, vomit and other bodily fluids. Scrubbing with a despondent mop and filthy water—though boiling hot—didn't help either. The blemishes remained no matter what.

Kim at first couldn't understand why anyone would want to come to Harbor Lights in the first place. She later found out that the staff was caring, kind and well-trained and people came there mainly because they had no money and couldn't afford the fancy kind of hospitals, like Metro Medical and Crestview.

She sputtered to Harbor Lights in her car, already expecting a hellish day. She was on the janitorial "squad", as they joked—the mopping, scrubbing, sweeping—and, by her third day earned herself the job of "gopher": "Kim, go for this; Kim, go for that."

It was a shit job, but it was one of the few available in the city to her. 

_It's a helluva lot better than doing porn_, she thought.

Though everyone talked to her (actually, she really couldn't call it "talk"—it was more like "shout orders at"), Kim usually only conversed with to two fellow employees on a regular basis: Dr. Walker Jackson and Tony Calvino.

Walker, by far the most popular doctor, was more commonly known as simply Happenin' Jackson or Doctor J. He had an fair skin tone and dark hair and eyes to boot, _very_ lanky and tall; Kim had to tilt her head upwards to meet his eyelevel. Always ready with a wisecrack, Walker liked to poke fun at people with lightheartedness.

Anthony "Tony" Del Monte Calvino was a gold chain and a mafia connection away from being a stereotypical Italian, which he was, in his own words. He had wavy dark hair and hazel eyes, a slight overbite and a long face dusted with a stubble, though not as full as Logan's was. His build was a bit muscled and but still a bit gangly. He was always willing to lend a hand to a friend, which was why Kim had taken a liking to him—she admired his congeniality. 

As Kim walked in through the doors of Harbor Lights, she was ready to leave. The waiting room was almost filled already. Like many inner-city hospitals, unless you were dying, bleeding severely or in labor, they wouldn't even look up at you if the waiting room was this full.

"Gonna be a long day," sighed one of Kim's co-workers, Sophie Wolf, who was on the janitorial staff with her.

"No kidding."

Kim accompanied Sophie to the back room, sort of a lounge where everyone who had time spent it. There was a countertop with a sink, a refrigerator, a mini-microwave and an abandoned coffee machine. The coffee machine wasn't even plugged in—like there was coffee to come by. There was also a ratty couch, two overstuffed and beat-up armchairs and one large circular table with half a dozen folding chairs arranged around it.

"I want to quit so bad," Sophie sighed, sinking into one of the folding chairs. "But this is the only job I've been able to come by in two years." Sophie was the hard-working young mother of three, only recently having her last baby. 

"What about Seamus?" Kim asked, referring to Sophie's husband.

Sophie shook her head, eyes brimming with tears. "Seamus can't find work either. So he has to stay with the kids…I had two weeks of maternity leave. _Two weeks!_" Sophie paused to reach for a tissue that was placed in a box on the table. She blew her nose and asked, "How do you do it, Kim? Survive?"

Kim shrugged. "Go with the flow I guess." She didn't want to give Sophie her resume, what "positions" she had held previously.

            "Ugh." Sophie stuck the tissue in the pocket of her scrubs. "I'm gonna go find Nnenia and ask for some of her nerve pills. Want anything off the trolley?"

            Nnenia Ashon was head of the infirmary, infamous for giving out pills to the staff if they needed, since most prescriptions were hard to come by in the first place. She hadn't been caught yet, but Kim figured it was only a matter of time.

            "No thanks, not right now."

            As Sophie left, Doctor Jackson sauntered in, the usual laid-back "It's aiight" grin on his face.

            "Hey Kim, howya doin'?" he asked, going straight to the refrigerator.

            "Okay…moved into my new apartment last night."

            "Yeah? George and Weezy style?"

            "Huh?" Kim raised an eyebrow. Walker was full of Pre-Pulse references that sometimes not even Kim could catch. 

            "Never mind. What's it like?" Walker pulled a can of Red Bull out of the refrigerator and opened it. He plopped down on one of the armchairs and took a bottle of pep pills from his white coat. "Want one?"

            "No thanks. It's pretty cool, the apartment. Looks really ritzy. Wood floors. Big windows…I can't wait to decorate it with crystal prisms and stuff. Make little rainbows everywhere."

            "You're such a girl."

            "Thanks for noticing."

            Walker tipped back a couple of the pep pills and swallowed them with a swish of Red Bull. Kim made a face that said, "How can you drink that stuff?!"

            "Hey…Doctor J," Kim asked, recovering from her sour expression. "Do you know, by any chance, anyone named Logan Cale?"

             "No, not offhand," Walker replied, after several stunned blinks. "Why?"

            "He's just this oddball who lives over me," Kim rolled her eyes. "I met him last night," she added with a chuckle. "He dresses like a beggar. I was ready to give him spare change when he came by to say hi."

            "Everyone looks like a g.d. beggar these days. It's the dress code of the new decade, Kim, didn't you get the memo?"

            Before Kim could make a wise-ass response, sirens blared outside and Walker stuck his fingers in his ears and winced. When it faded, he shook his head.

            "Been working here almost five years and I still fucking hate that noise."

            Walker stood up, pocketing the pep pills and brandishing his stethoscope like a mighty weapon. "Well, looks like we're startin' early, podnah."

            Logan spent the day alternating between sulking in his office and resting on the couch, recovering. From what, he wasn't sure. He closed his blinds, took a few aspirin and used his time to do useless, menial activities…alphabetizing his recipe Rolodex, reading and re-reading _The Complete Works of Saki_ and _The Edgar Allen Poe Collection_…downloading some Nirvana songs. Kim was still on his mind. 

            He slammed closed _Shakespeare's Tragedies_ and took off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose. Going to his liquor cabinet that had remained unopened since he shared a glass of wine with Max on their belated anniversary party, he withdrew a tall bottle of vodka. It was stiff, he knew that. It was what he needed right now.

            He couldn't think of anything else to do but drown his sorrows in alcohol.


	5. Daffodils

It was the longest day of Kim's life. She had never felt so tired before as she drove home, fighting against the fatigue. She'd spent more time on her hands and knees today than she had during her entire career in the porn industry. 

            The incident that had sent the ambulances running first thing in the morning involved a motorcycle accident. A twenty-three-year-old male and his girl collided into a guardrail, neither of them were wearing a helmet. It was a bloody mess. Kim mopped up everything off the floor in their room—blood, tissue, cartilage, gravel, even a few teeth. Miller, one of the maintenance crew, pocketed a tooth, to Kim's disgust. 

Around noon, a patient came in with severe abdominal bleeding from a knife wound, it had made a large pool of blood in the middle of the waiting room, where he collapsed before he could utter a single word. Thankfully, Dr. Peter Kosi, who had been in the waiting room discussing operating room procedures with the newest and youngest nurse Breeze Newman ("though I think he was trying to get with me," as Breeze said later), immediately sprung into action, leaving the blood to Kim and Sophie. 

When the pool was cleaned, it took them an extra hour to remove the stain as best the could, using everything they could think of. By the time they had done all they could do, the stain remained like a large blotchy mole on the floor. It leered back at Sophie and Kim, daring them to take one more try.

"I give up," Sophie said, picking at her cuticles. "How about you?"

"I'm out of ideas," Kim agreed. "I throw in the towel."

Just as Kim was about to move on to her next shit job, a pale young woman, wearing nothing but a long blue nightgown streaked with blood in wild, ragged designs down to the hem, staggered into the hospital. The blood was also on her hands and feet and she was leaving not only a collection of bloody footprints but large splotches of blood in an awkward trail. Walker, who had been just passing through the waiting room on his way to make his rounds, recognized the woman, who was extremely pretty—raven-haired and large brown eyes.

"Erica," he said. "What happened?"

"I…I tried and I c-couldn't…" the girl said weakly. She looked down at her bloodied hands with a pained expression.

"Georgia," Walker called to the head nurse. "Page Dr. Caruthers and tell her to meet me in room 763, P.D.Q." 

"Yes, Doctor Jackson."

When Walker whisked the young girl away, Dr. Ireland Caruthers hot on their heels, Sophie sagged her shoulders and gave Kim a pained expression.

"Bloody footprints," Kim said with a weak smile. "This is one I _haven't_ seen."

Miller Anderson and Tucker Johansen, the other two on the janitorial staff, wandered over.

"What just happened?" Tucker asked. He was not much older than Kim or Sophie, looked young enough to still be in high school. Clean-shaven with dirty-blond hair and blue eyes, Tucker could be easily described as baby-faced, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. He always liked to be informed about what was going on. Miller, however, was an older resident, maybe late fifties, Kim wasn't sure. He was a kindly black man with whitening hair and callused hands. He'd been working at Harbor Lights for a long time, even before the Pulse. 

"No clue," Sophie said. "Some girl came in bleeding and was taken away. Happenin' Jackson looked horrified, called Dr. Caruthers and went in after her."

"Some gal?" Miller asked. "Happenin' Jackson? Did the gal have black hair and sort of a pale face? Big brown eyes?"

"Yeah," Kim said, getting back on her hands and knees to start scrubbing the footprints. "Doc called her Erica."

"I know her," he replied. "That's Doctor J's seventeen-year-old sister."

Sophie's eyes went wide. "What?"

"Erica comes in here all the time. She's a reckless child. Always coming in with cuts, bruises from fights. Broken bones from stupid stunts she tries. Twice to get her stomach pumped—one for OD'ing on sleeping pills, one for too much alcohol."

"Shame," Kim said lackadaisically, having heard all too many stories almost exactly like this. "Sophie, hand me that bleach solution. Oh, and we're going to need to tell Colleen we're running out of shit to keep this dump shinin' like the top of the Chrysler Building."

"Here," Sophie tossed the almost-empty bottle to Kim and turned to Miller. "Erica comes here a lot? How come I've never seen her?"

"She usually comes in very late at night—two, three A.M. Usually wasted."

Sophie sighed and shook her head, "Such a pretty girl. Why would anyone want to ruin their life like that?"

Logan sighed and poured himself another shot of vodka. It had been a long time since he'd had drank anything harder than beer or wine.

He'd played the fateful night over and over again in his mind, trying to find a loophole. Was it possible Max had survived?

_No, she died in your arms._

Feeling the pain rising in his chest again, he quenched it with a quick swallow of vodka. He stared at the empty glass and shrugged, pouring himself another.

_At least I'm not seeing double yet._

The day Max died was the most painful of his life, even more than when his mother Caroline died, succumbing to cancer. Even more than when his father Julian was killed in a car accident. 

He felt a numbness that he couldn't shake. His useless legs hung limply, dangling like tanned streamers off the couch. He couldn't get up. He didn't want to get up. Not ever. Not ever again.

Pain…pain was all he felt.

Kim got home just before midnight, changed out of her scrubs and collapsed into bed wearing nothing but her bra and panties. She didn't even bother to turn on her Nirvana CD or pick up _The Kurt Cobain Journals_, working her way through it slowly but surely. She just wanted to sleep and never wake up. Not ever again.

She'd been in bed for ten minutes, eyes closed, head swimming with thoughts, still smelling bleach on her peeling hands and wrapped in three blankets when a loud knocking came at her door.

"Not happening," she groaned, grabbing her pink terrycloth robe on her way out. She padded to the door, her bare feet slapping against the wood floor. She was sure she looked like a worn-out hooker in the garments she donned at this point and hoped whoever was behind the door didn't take offense.

When she opened the door she got a big shock.

"Logan?" she closed her robe over her purple lace bra and her "Thursday" thong panties with dancing monkeys on them.

"Oh, you're busy," Logan said, slightly slurred. "Sorry."

"No, I just got home," Kim said. "You look awful."

Logan chuckled, "Thanks."

"You wanna come in?"

"Oh…sure, I guess."     

            He followed Kim to the kitchen and sat down at the table, head in hands, trying not to stare at Kim's perky breasts in those undergarments. Her hair was mussed around her face but still, her beauty shined through.

            "Want anything to drink? I have Bloody Mary mix somewhere here…"

            "Sounds great."

            Kim, not unskilled with handling liquor, whipped up the Bloody Marys, carefully pouring just the right amount of alcohol and a dash of Tabasco, adding a half of a celery stalk.

            "I only have one left," she said in apology about the stalk.

            "S'okay," Logan said, gulping down the Bloody Mary. "Pretty good," he said between sips.

            "Eh, I used to work in a bar. You know, between making the movies."

            "Ah," Logan said, feeling the heat rise from his neck, surely turning his face the same color as the Bloody Mary. "Yeah. So, you just got home?" he quickly changed the subject. "From what? A party or something?"

            Kim winced, "Egad, no. I work at Harbor Lights Hospital. Maintenance and sanitation staffer." She pointed to her ID tag that she had flung on the kitchen table, gone unnoticed till now.

            "How glamorous," Logan added sarcastically with a light laugh.

            "Tell me about it. I spend the majority of my day cleaning up after other people…blood, guts, vomit…not really a dream job but it pays rent."

            Logan felt his stomach churn. He swallowed hard.

            "We had this one girl come in today, she was wearing like a nightgown or something…blood streaming down her legs, all over her hands. She even left bloody foot prints. God knows what the hell she'd been doing."

            He swallowed hard and nodded. 

            "Another guy came in with a knife's slice right through his belly. Everything was just pouring out. There was blood everywhere, even like, spewing from his mouth—"

            "What's your bathroom?" Logan asked quickly, unable to stand it.

            "Down the hall to the right," Kim directed, pointing. She didn't even realize why he'd ask until he leapt out of his chair and hurried towards there. She heard a door open, slam close and the sound of retching. 

            Tying the sash of her robe, Kim made her way towards the bathroom. She knocked on the door, "Logan? Are you okay?" When he didn't answer, she knocked again. "Can I come in? Logan?"

            At the sound of a flushing toilet and then running water, Kim opened the door—it _was_ her bathroom, anyway. Logan was sitting on the floor awkwardly, his legs straight out and stiff. His face was in his hands, his elbows rested on his knees.

            "I'm sorry," he sighed. "I had a little too much to drink."

            "If you get this sick after one Bloody Mary, I should say so!" 

            "No, it wasn't just the Bloody Mary…I've kind of been downing all day. The hard stuff. Vodka, whisky, gin, bourbon."

            "I see." Kim took a washcloth out of a basket she kept next to the sink, drenched it with cold water from the tap, and plopped it on Logan's head. 

            He gave a light chuckle and pressed it against his face. "Feels good."

            "Logan," she knelt down next to him and put her face next to his, like she was talking to a child. "Do you have a problem?"

            "Hm?" he asked, muffled underneath the damp cloth.

            "Do you usually drink like this?"

            "Uh-uh…I actually haven't in a while. I've been sober for almost six years."

            "So you did have a problem?" Kim asked, concern wrinkling her brow. 

            Logan lowered the washcloth until only his icy blue eyes were revealed. "I _did_," he stressed.

            Kim sighed sympathetically and put a sensitive arm around Logan's shoulders. "Logan, Logan, Logan. I've watched so many people I love destroy their lives with alcohol…"

            "I don't need to hear it," Logan snapped, shrugging Kim off. "I_ had_ a drinking problem, I'm all right now."

            "If you're all right, why are you drinking?"

            "It's none of your damn business."

            "None of my damn business…Logan, I know we don't know each other, but I can't stand it when people ruin their lives like this…before my father began drinking, he was the most sun-shiniest person I knew. He would always call me his Baby Daffodil, which is what I called myself when I went into 'show-biz'. He would whistle all the time. He was the best whistler. But the Pulse…it sent him on a downward spiral. He just crashed and burned. His business declined. His stocks crashed. He just locked himself in his office and drank down his sorrows. No more whistling, no more Baby Daffodil…"

Kim sighed, remembering her father and how she'd found him dead in his office when she was fourteen—from alcohol poisoning—and how she'd screamed and screamed as her father's cold dead eyes stared at her. How Cal, then eighteen, had to restrain her and how she wouldn't stop screaming. Doctor Paxton had to be called. He pricked her arm as Cal held her down and then she passed out. Everything was fuzzy until the funeral three days later. Kim remembered sitting bleary-eyed in the church—it was then she decided to throw away religion. When mourners came to pay their respects, all she could do was stare at them like a dumb child. She could hear whispers…the gossip…

"Poor girl, she was the one who found the body…"

"I do hope Gracia is alright, having to deal with that hysteric child…"

"Did you hear about poor little Kimber-Leigh? She found Louis, you know, dead. I don't know who to have more sympathy for: Louis, thanks to the Pulse, Gracia having to deal with the children, or Kimber-Leigh…"

"Sweet child—they say she's gone into hysterics and had to tie her down…"

"…May never speak again. Mark Paxton says it's not unusual when a child experiences the death of a parent…"

The last thing Kim cared to remember was throwing a daffodil in the grave on his coffin, and then fainting beside it, just crumbling to the ground in a mass of the black velvet of her dress. She woke as Cal was carrying her to the limousine, tears running down her face, sobbing, "Daffodils…daffodils…daffodils…"

            "It started with Bennett," Logan whispered, interrupting Kim's reverie.

            "Who's Bennett?" Kim asked, shaking her head slightly to rid herself of the images of her father's body.

            "My cousin. I was best man at his wedding last year," he replied warily. "I went to live with him and my aunt Margo and Uncle Jonah, when I was fourteen, after my father was killed."

            "Oh." _We both lost our fathers at fourteen, how odd._

            "When we were fifteen, Bennett and his friend Carter broke into Jonah's bar while his parents were out. I went to see what they were doing, and Bennett dared me to drink a whole thing of vodka.

            "'It has no taste,' he said. 'Try it, it'll just make you dizzy for a few minutes.'

            "So, of course, I downed it. I wasn't gonna say no, let them think I was a pussy or anything."

            "Peer pressure," Kim tsked.

            "It wasn't so bad…till I got dizzy. But I wanted more. Pretty soon, the three of us were more wasted than frat boys. I ran outside and puked in Margo's rhododendron bushes and went back for more."

            Kim had to wince.

            "Well, ever since then, I'd sneak down into Jonah's liquor cabinet and drink myself sick. He never noticed and if he did, he never said anything. He was like that. I would steal liquor at their dumb parties, drinking from other people's glasses and then refilling them without them noticing. Wine, bourbon, scotch and soda, vodka tonic." He threw his hands up in the air. "Before I knew it I was a full-blown alcoholic."

            "Is that why you always look like shit?"

            "Huh?" Logan scratched his stubble. Then it hit him. "Oh…yeah…well, I don't get out much anymore."

            Kim scoffed. "I get out too much."

"Whatever. I think it's the fact that—" Again, Logan cut himself short and scanned the room, searching for an exit.

"That what?" Kim cocked her head and bit her lip. Logan began to feel faint.

He sighed and decided to tell her, but the words didn't come easily. "My girlfriend…my heart, my love, Max. She…she died four months ago. And you look too, too much like her…it's sort of disturbing for me. I've been shutting myself up in my apartment, being persona non grata, pushing everyone away."

"How did she die?" asked Kim softly after a pause, her heart lurching.

Struggling with the terms, he managed to choke out, "Gunshot wound." That was all he wanted to say.

"Oh," Kim breathed, feeling overwhelmingly stupid. So _that's_ why he had acted weird that one night. _I remind him of his girlfriend. I look like her._ And to think, she was really a blonde! _How awful…I know what it's like to loose people you love, all too well. Everyone from my father to Gabrielle who deserted me in California…there must be something worth doing for Logan…as long as we're sharing…_

Kim's eyes lowered, "Listen, I don't want to lose someone else to a stupid addiction. If you don't mind…I'd like us to be friends. And friends help each other out and I want to help you. In any way I can."

"You want to be my friend?" Logan asked suspiciously.

"Yeah. Is that so bad? Besides, I knew you would be a good friend as soon as you saw me in my underwear."

"Why?"

"Because you didn't laugh at them. They say 'Thursday'."

"And why would I laugh at that?"

Kim pointed to the Rolex on Logan's wrist, "Because it's been Friday for two hours."


	6. Nitty Gritty

            Kim was true to her word. She was determined to be friends with Logan, whether he liked it or not. For the duration of a month's time, she did her damnedest.

            She got mixed signals from him. It was hard to tell whether he was in a welcoming mood or not. At first, she decided that him seeing her might be too painful, her looking so much like that girl…Max. 

But over the next few weeks, she sent him gifts, whether by mail or leaving them on his doorstep. When Kim found out he liked to cook, she sent him recipe books. When she discovered art was another favorite of his, she bought a collection of art books. And once his love for classical music was discovered, Kim scrounged up several CD's for him that she found were to his liking. She admired his collection of rare and expensive wines and got him a beautiful wine rack.

Most importantly, Kim would pop over and check up on him before she went to work and whenever she got home to say hello, but to secretly make sure he hadn't been drinking. Thankfully, she'd never run into Asha, whom she hadn't thought about since they'd run into each other, though Kim would see Asha's car in the parking lot near Foggle Towers once in while and it would stay there for hours. Kim would stare out her window, bowl of mac and cheese in hand, wondering what the hell they did for so long. And how did he drink without Asha knowing?

_He probably has scotch in a tumbler and tells Asha it's water._

Kim had accepted the fact that Logan had started drinking to "dull the pain" of Max's death and to "get over the shock" of seeing Kim, almost a doppelganger of her. She knew that just because she told him to stop that he would magically quit.

If Logan was asleep when Kim arrived (he had told her once where he hid an extra key), she would pace around his beautiful penthouse, admiring paintings and knickknacks and photographs. There were a lot of photographs, mainly in the office. Pictures of his family, mostly his parents. They were beautiful people; Julian and Caroline were their names. Julian looked a lot like Logan, Kim decided. They both handsome and had the same facial features including the same smile, except Julian had dark brown hair. Caroline was blonde, like Logan, and had a shapely body with beautiful hands. Kim loved people with beautiful hands. Soft ones, with long fingers and shiny fingernails. Those hands were capable of anything, she decided. Those hands never handled any harsh chemicals or gotten dirty. 

She imagined Caroline was everything her mother, Gracia, wasn't. Caroline followed ancient beauty regimens, like Cleopatra's milk baths and Marie Antoinette's chicken skin gloves. Caroline baked cookies with a bit of love in each one. Caroline attended PTA functions and school plays. Caroline attended parties where she always looked like a beauty queen. 

_Logan didn't realize how lucky he was_, Kim thought, staring at a family portrait. _What a beautiful family. What a beautiful life it must have been. His family had money…they probably went on sensational family vacations to all sorts of exotic places._

Kim also studied pictures of Max Guevara, the girl who could be Kim's twin. She began to wonder if dying her hair dark brown was a mistake and for a long time considered going back to her natural color. 

They _were_ alike in many ways, physically. Light in body weight with hard-earned muscle tone. Brown hair—curly and sort of short—with matching brown eyes. Roughly five and a half feet tall. Max too possessed a coy yet flirtatious smile, though they favored the classic sexy pout for most snapshots. The only large difference was, Max's lips always looked swollen. Kim wondered if they were like that naturally or it was a result of something, like a fight or plastic surgery. Kim had lip gloss that made her lips puff up slightly, but nothing like Max's. All other differences were subtle: Kim's breasts were a bit larger and her hips had a little more of a curve. Max's nose was longer while Kim's was more button-like. 

This was all fine and good, but what Kim really wanted to know was what she was _like_. Sure she knew now from photographs and mirrors how she looked, but…what kind of music did she like? The more modern hip-hop or the classical like Bach and Mozart that Logan adored? Did she read books or tell jokes? What was her favorite color? Food? Who was her childhood hero? What made her happy and sad? Kim could answer these questions about herself quick as lightening but Max was a mystery to her. But who could she ask?

Kim floated through work ever since her relationship with Logan was blossoming into a real friendship, not even minding about the double shift she had to take because Sophie had to leave early in the afternoon. Her oldest child, Dominique, had contracted a stomach flu and needed to be taken home from school. 

"I would have Seamus do it but he finally found a job," she said, in a hurry to rush out the door. "I don't want to have him being called out of work now. You don't mind covering, do you, Kim?"

"No," Kim said truthfully. "Not at all."

She would rather be at work than stuck taking care of children, she decided. But Sophie seemed to be happy about going home, despite the fact that she'd have to juggle Dominique, who was seven, sick in bed and then Jedidiah, her six-week-old baby. Between the two was poor Riordan, age three, who still needed help with everything. Kim had respect for Sophie and all she did to keep her head above water with three children.

_I'm never going to have children_, Kim thought to herself as she quietly hummed _Minuet in G_ while she mopped the floor of the operating room where a bone marrow transplant had just taken place. _What would I do with children? I mean, I haven't had a boyfriend in ages—who in hell would I marry?_

_But look at all these pregnant women who come here. It's contagious, I think. I mean, even that nurse Celeste Mitchell is pregnant. _

"Am I interrupting anything?"

Kim looked up from mopping and saw Doctor Jackson in the doorway. "Nope," she said. "Just finishing up."

"Good. I, uh, forgot my glasses here so I'll just…"

"You don't wear glasses, Doctor J," Kim smiled as she wrung out the mop. She wheeled the bucket out of the room.

"Oh, yeah, that's right…uh, why'd I come in here…?" Doctor Jackson paced the doorway.

"Either to bother me or ask me out," Kim winked. "How's Erica? I haven't had a chance to ask you in ages."

"Erica?"

"Yes, Erica. Your sister?" 

Doctor Jackson shook his head, "I never told you about—"

"Small hospital, big ears, Doctor J."

"Big mouths to boot," he agreed. "Erica is…Erica. I'm sure you've been told all about her excursions, as flattering as they were. This time she's outdone herself." Doctor Jackson checked his watch. "Are you busy now?"

"Well, I've just gotta put the cart away. Other than that, no."

"Meet me in the lounge and I'll tell you the nitty-gritty story."

"Oh goody."

When Kim got to the lounge. Walker Jackson had already claimed an armchair and a can of Red Bull. There were a few others in the room—the nurses Lizzie Sherman and Veronike Kaspar were gossiping hungrily, Doctor Danielle Scarmozza chitchatting with the lab tech Roderick King and the 6-months-pregnant Celeste Mitchell taking a nap on the other arm chair.

"So, what's this about Erica?" Kim asked quietly in case he was uncomfortable talking about her in public.

"Well, like I said and I'm sure you've heard, she's sort of a problem child," Doctor Jackson began. "She drinks, she smokes, she goes to raves and bars and strip clubs, she has tawdry sex."

"Sounds like my kind of gal."

"No, not really. On top of all this, Erica loves to take dares. She'll jump off a roof into a swimming pool, she'll do as many shots as she can in fifteen seconds. She'll car surf, streak, you name it. Once she took a scooter and raced it down an ice-laden hill. She broke a couple of ribs and her arm and the competitor on the other scooter broke both his legs and sprained his neck, not to mention both suffered concussions. I can't tell you how many times I've saved her life."

"You don't have to tell me. I can imagine."

"What you saw last month, with the bloody footprints and all, well it takes the cake…Erica apparently had gotten pregnant and tried to give herself an abortion."

Kim's jaw dropped but she quickly closed it. "What?"

"She told me in confidence that she thought she was, so I had Doctor Caruthers examine her in private, out of the hospital. When it was positive, Erica practically hit the roof. She was about two months. She said right then and there, 'Walker, I want to get an abortion.' When I told her no, that this was something she had to see through as a punishment for her recklessness, she threw a hissy fit and then finally broke down in tears and beseeched me. I still outright refused. Erica needed to learn a lesson. After a lot of begging and pleading, she finally relented and agreed not to abort. It took a lot to keep her home, I'll tell you that. She still wanted to go out and party and do stunts!"

"Well, what happened?" Kim asked breathlessly. She had been practically holding her breath. 

"She had done the only thing _she _thought was right: she took an abortion pill."

"You can still get those?"

"Erica said she had gotten them off of the black market. The only problem is, you can experience severe hemorrhages. And that's what happened to Erica. She started bleeding and, realizing that she had no car to get here, decided to walk from the house to Harbor Lights, the dumb kid."

"Is she okay at least?"

"Not really," Doctor Jackson shook her head. "She lost a lot of blood between the walking and the operation. I hope she's happy she's destroyed herself now."

"Destroyed herself?"

"The only way to stop the hemorrhages, Doctor Caruthers said, was to remove all of Erica's 'equipment', for lack of a better word."

It took Kim awhile to piece it together, but then it clicked: because of a stupid mistake, Erica could no longer have any babies. "How sad."

"It's hard to feel sad," Doctor Jackson said. "Because I tried to tell her that this was the only way she would learn, but no. Being Erica, she decided to take the easy way out. Seventeen and already her chances of living a normal life are screwed, if the drinking and drugs don't kill her first."

Kim could understand why Walker was so bitter about Erica, but she couldn't imagine how he could say something like that. She and Cal were close and whenever they quarreled, it was only a short-lived little spat. The relationship she had with him was almost out of a work of fiction, they got along so well. It was a tight bond they shared.

"Where is Erica now?"

"I haven't decided," Doctor Jackson replied. "Right now our aunt is watching her. I've restricted Erica to her room. Either she goes back to live with our parents or I put her in an institution, where she can be controlled." He took a few swallows of Red Bull. "Whichever I decide, she'll be out of my hair and I can focus more on my work here. Truthfully, I'm already looking into an institution for reckless teens in North Carolina, called the Meridian House. I'm taking a week off next month to visit it personally."

_God. If my mother knew about places like this, she would have shipped me off ages ago and never let me come home,_ Kim thought. "Do your parents know about Erica doing stuff like this?"

"Only when I have to tell them. See, we're originally from Arizona. My parents sent Erica here to Seattle to go to boarding school and she stays with me at my apartment rather than the dorms, on my parents' insistence. They expect me to keep tabs on her. Of course I told them about her latest exploit and the operation and my mother cried hysterically. Erica was her last chance at grandchildren—she knows I'll never get married. My father was devastated. I don't think they can handle her right now, which is why the Meridian House is starting to look good."

Kim agreed. She decided she needed some fresh air, so she offered her apologies to Walker and exited the room, feeling sorrowful. On her way out the door, she bumped nose-to-chest with someone.

"Ow," she winced, rubbing her nose. She looked up into the cerulean eyes of Logan Cale. "Hi."

"Hi," Logan said. "You okay?"

"Yeah. I just need a break. I'm working a double today. Sophie had to leave. What are you doing here? You never leave the penthouse."

Logan shrugged. "I got bored."

He looked flushed and Kim had her suspicions. She had a feeling he was still drinking but at least he wasn't slurring or swaying. 

"You want to go out for lunch?" Logan asked suddenly.

Kim looked at Logan's Rolex. "It's three-thirty."

"Is it?" Logan checked the watch for himself, wondering why he bothered wearing that dumb thing. "Oh, it is. Well, I'm hungry. You still want?"

With a reserved smile, Kim nodded. "Let me just change out of my scrubs…I always keep a change of clothes in my locker. Wait here?"

"Sure."

She could have practically skipped. It was almost amazing how much she was able to transform Logan. Well, not really transform…but it was a start. At least now he was eating real food. Kim would often observe that he rarely ate and probably drank his meals most of the time. The cookbooks she'd purchased for him were still unused, she had noticed. 

Kim quickly changed out of her scrubs, where the ankle cuffs were permanently splattered with blood and the knees were always dirty and faded. When she stepped out of the hospital after telling Georgia, the head nurse, where she was going, she felt like a normal person, not a hospital worker. She was wearing her favorite tight black jeans and a plain olive green baby tee. She slung her fringed leather jacket over her shoulder and tossed her hair and felt like a sophisticated college student going to a luncheon with her boyfriend.

"So where are we going?" Kim asked.

"I know a little place that's out-of-the-way. The head chef taught me everything I knew. He was a friend of my father's. Whenever I go there he offers me a job and I turn him down."

"Why?"

Logan shot her a look that made her go from sophisticated college student to dumb first-grader. "I don't like to leave the house a lot."

"Oh yeah, that's right."

The restaurant was indeed tucked away. It was called Holbrook and it was quite a walk, almost a mile and a half, to get there. Kim had to stop and rest once or twice but Logan never seemed to tire. 

"I have a lot of energy," he answered quickly when Kim inquired.

At Holbrook, they were greeted by a short, round-ish man in a chef's coat. "Logan!" he said jollily. "What a nice surprise. I haven't seen you since, oh it must be almost a year now!"

"Afternoon, Kent," Logan shook hands with the man. "This is my friend Kim."

Kent shook Kim's hand, gently crushing all her fingers. He had a tight grip for a man of his size. She tried not to grimace.

"Here for a bite to eat?"

"Why else?" 

"Ah-ha!" Kent laughed. "Well, come I'll get you your table."

Holbrook was nearly empty, with only three other tables in the dining room with couples. Kim began to feel uneasy.

"Logan, are you sure you won't consider a job here?" Kent asked as he handed them their menus.

"I'm perfectly happy with the work I'm doing now, Kent, but thanks."

After Kent left, it took a lot to keep Kim from laughing. "What other work do you do?" she asked curiously.

"Huh? Oh…that…it's just a-a line that I use to…to keep Kent at bay."

"Oh."

They ordered drinks (a white wine spritzer for Kim and a dry martini for Logan) from a waiter who looked very happy to see Logan as well.

"How are you feeling, Mister Cale?" he asked.

"Fine, fine, Troyal. Why do you ask?"

"Well, you haven't been in here since the accident so I figured—"

"I'm alright, Troyal, don't worry about me."

_Accident?_ Kim's ears perked up._ Was that how Max died? The gunshot was accidental?_

When Troyal left, Kim felt she really had to ask or she'd explode, "What accident?"

Logan sighed. "I didn't realize having friends came with all these strings," he muttered. "A little over a year ago I was…shot. In the back. Four times. It ruptured my spine and confined me to a wheelchair. I use these things…it's called an exoskeleton." He pulled up his pant leg to just above the ankle to show her the machinery. "It helps me walk, jump, run, kick…basically use my legs again."

"That's pretty cool," Kim said, amazed. "So…was that the accident the waiter was talking about?"

"Uh…yeah, that's the short version of it."

"Well, what's the long version?"

Logan didn't want to elaborate, so instead he picked up the menu and opened it, "You should try their house salad. The dressing's spectacular."

"Logan," Kim reached for his hand. "I don't have to tell you twice I'm a sucker for long stories."

He pulled away, "I'd rather not go into nitty-gritty details, Kim. Just forget it."


	7. The Star Group

**Disclaimer**: everything that has to do with _The Star Group_, including character names, dialogue and quotes, belong to Christopher Pike and not to me. However, all the people _involved_ with making the movie of _The Star Group_, actors, directors, etc. are all mine.

            It didn't take long for Logan to realize that having Kim as a friend was almost as good as having a prison guard tag along with you wherever you went.

            "Logan, that's your _third_ martini."

            "Why don't you have some iced tea that's _not_ from Long Island?"

            Other than that, their lunch was pretty much uneventful except when Kim raised her white wine spritzer and said,

            "I'd like to propose a toast."

            "Hm?" Logan stared at her over the brim of his martini.

            "To us. To the beginning," Kim winked. "Of a beautiful _friendship_."

            "Ah yes. To us." Logan chuckled.

            They clinked glasses and shared a secret smile.

            On the walk home after he dropped Kim back off at Harbor Lights, he couldn't figure out why he didn't take the Aztek.

            _Oh yeah_, he said as the elevator went up to his penthouse. _I went out for a walk, some fresh air and ended up at Harbor Lights._

            As he entered the penthouse, he heard a voice chirp, "Logan? Is that you?"

            The voice scared the crap out of him. It was then he noticed Asha standing in the foyer, her jacket draped over her arm. "Asha. What's up?"

            "Where have you been?" she asked, like a nagging wife. 

            "For a walk. Want a drink?"

            "No thanks. You don't go for walks. Are you okay?"

            "I took Kim to lunch."

            "But it's a quarter to seven."

            "Late lunch." Logan went past his associate and went into the kitchen to the wine rack Kim had bought him. It stood about four and a half feet tall, made out of cast iron fashioned to look like twisted grape vines and leaves. It was very ornate but strong. He hadn't stored just his wine collection, but all of his liquors. He made himself some hot tea and laced it with bourbon, something his mother liked to do at her high teas she held every month. There was a chill in his bones that wouldn't go away. His legs began to throb and decided to use the wheelchair for a while. He put his tea mug down and headed for his bedroom.

            Once stripped of the exoskeleton and into his favorite sweatpants Logan zoomed into the kitchen and picked up his mug and met Asha back in the living room, filled with apologies. 

            "I thought you quit drinking," she said. 

            "Who said I started again?" Logan took a sip of his tea and it warmed him up a bit.

            "I'm not that shallow, Logan—"

            "Coulda fooled me," he muttered.

            "—but I can easily tell that you've been drinking. That tea has bourbon in it."

            "Can't get anything past you, can I?"

            "Logan, you know what happens when you—"

            "Not you, too," Logan slammed his mug down so hard it was a miracle it didn't shatter, but a good amount of it splashed out and onto the coffee table. "Kim has been giving me shit about the drinking too."

            "Who's Kim?"

            Logan rolled his eyes downward. "She, uh, she's below me."

            To this, Asha raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

            "No, not-not like…like _that_. Good God, Asha. She's in the apartment below this one. If you put your ear to the floor you can hear her music."

            "I'll pass, thank you."

            "She plays a lot of Nirvana. Something I've never really developed a taste for but," Logan chuckled, "over the past month I've gotten used to it."

            "Okay…now I know you're drunk. The great Logan Cale interested in pre-Pulse rock music."

            "Asha, please, I'm not drunk."

            She shook her head in either disbelief or surrender. "I don't know anymore, Logan. I just don't know. But ever since this Kim showed up, you've been nursing every bottle in the damn place. I think she's the problem."

            Logan blinked in shock. "Let me show you something," he said after a moment's pause.

            He wheeled into the office, Asha hot on his heels. He clicked around on the computer until he got what he wanted. The notorious last photograph of Max Guevara. It was a still from a surveillance video, taken from the night she died. She's looking right into the camera, her famous "let's-get-down-to-business" pout frozen in time. "Take a look at that," Logan instructed Asha. "And compare it with this."

            Logan held up a picture of Kim he had gotten off the net by using a search engine on the actress Baby Daffodil. He found one easily enough, but had a tough time determining which were real sites from the pornography. The one snapshot he found was a screen cap from the last B-movie she did only three months ago, called _The Star Group_, which was supposedly based on a book. 

She'd played a young woman named "Sweet" Gale Schrater who had psychic powers. The cap Logan had gotten looked almost exactly like the still of Max, except instead of looking straight into the camera, Kim's head was cocked a bit and she was looking at someone to her left, someone off-screen. She looked young and happy but concerned and serious at the same time. He had downloaded the whole movie from the website, which was more about the director, Dune Ambrose, than Kim.

There was one scene that made him smile. Kim's character, Gale, was conversing with a young man named Daniel played by Ari Sampson. It was lunchtime, probably at high school, shot outside:

_"Do you like tuna fish?" Gale was asking Daniel. She held up a sandwich. _

_"Yeah," Daniel said. A voice over, Daniel's thoughts that narrated the story, said, "I hated tuna fish."_

_"I hate it. Do you want it?" Gale handed Daniel the sandwich_

_"I just ate." Daniel handed it back._

_"Lunch just started. When did you eat?" Gale put the sandwich back into a brown paper bag._

_"In history class," Daniel said. "If you had been there, you would have seen it."_

_Gale chuckled, "You know what I like about you Danny?" she leaned in._

_"What?" Daniel leaned in closer. Their foreheads almost touched._

_"You're so full of it."_

_"I had hoped for better," said Daniel's thoughts. "You know what I like about you?" he asked out loud._

_"Yeah," answered Gale quickly._

_"What?"_

_She shrugged non-chalantly and answered as if it were so totally obvious, "My ass."_

            "That's sort of weird," Asha said, taking a closer look at the two photographs. "They look a like, somewhat."

            "Somewhat?" Logan's eyes narrowed. "They could be related. They could be twins. They could be…" His eyes darted wildly between the two images. "The same."

            "What?"

            "Is it possible Max could have survived? No, no…wait…I think…hmm…" Logan whizzed around his office, thumbing through papers, clicking around on the computers. Asha began to think he'd finally gone mad. 

            "Manticore…they're crazy," Logan mumbled. "They…she's not dead."

            "Logan," Asha said gently.

            "Max knew. She knew what it was all like, the outside. They didn't want anyone to corrupt their precious super soldiers. Max knew, she was smart, she had gotten away…so they…they-they…_damn_!"

            "Logan," Asha added a little more harshness to her tone, like scolding a puppy or small child. 

            "They brought Max back to life," Logan had a pencil between his teeth, something Asha noticed he did when he was concentrating really hard on something. She would watch him go through boxes of them because he'd snapped them or bitten them beyond usage. He'd also been known to bite off the erasers and chew on them like gum. Asha couldn't find how that could be tasty but ever since Max died, Logan's nerve endings just split like unkempt hair, along with what was left of his sanity. "Brought her back to life, they can do that. They brought her back to life, erased her memory and built a new one and set her free. Yes. Yes, that's what they did. They were good at that you know, making up lies. Been saying for years that they were a VA hospital. Bullshit if I ever heard it. I have to…I have to talk to…Eyes Only."

            "What would he do about it?" Asha asked.

            "Eyes Only knows a lot of stuff I don't, that the American people don't."

            "But Logan…"

            "_No!_" he replied sharply. "I _know_ Max is still out there! If not in Kim, somewhere else. But having Kim here…it's as good as. I might have her back in no time…just a few simple tests. All it will take is a little bit of the third degree."

            "Logan, you're—"

            "Get out, Asha."


	8. Gracia Addison

            "Barcode?"

            "Well…"

            "No, I don't have one. You can take a look if you want," Kim lifted her ponytail off her neck. "Cal and I used to draw all over each other when we were little but none of them resembled barcodes."

            "Draw on each other?" Logan raised an eyebrow.

            "You didn't have any brothers or sisters, did you?"

            "No. Only Bennett, who was really my cousin actually."

            "Magic Markers were just so _cool_ though. Ever have?"

            "Of course," Logan looked insulted. "I wasn't Rembrandt but my mom hung pictures on the fridge just like anyone."

            "Okay, okay. You just seem, you know, more at home with cello practice and private tennis lessons than with Magic Markers."

            Logan smiled. She was right, sort of. Smiling at memories of his youth, he admitted, "I liked the ones that smelled good."

            "Oh yeah!" Kim smiled, playfully punching him. "Cal and I would just sit and sniff 'em like they were filled with cocaine or something, get addicted. We would walk around with colored dots under our noses. The red ones would freak Mom out, like we were bleeding or something. We got a big kick out of making her crazy."

            Logan laughed. He had taken Kim to Holbrook again, for another casual luncheon. She had a day off, one of her "use-em-or-loose-em" sick days. With her pony-tailed hair and dressed in a tight black tank top, navy blue sweatpants and a light-gray sweater jacket, she looked ready for a day at the gym instead. 

            He had spent the entire afternoon slipping in questions about Manticore, genetic engineering and such. She didn't really have answers that satisfied him though. 

_They must've done a good job on her._

He held fast to his belief.

"The green ones were great too," Kim remembered. "And oh, Halloween was the best! When we couldn't really get costumes anymore, Cal and I made each other into zombies with the washable markers, only sometimes they wouldn't come off so we'd walk around like that for at least two days afterwards."

"I never really celebrated Halloween," Logan sipped his martini.

"Shut up," Kim couldn't believe it. "Really? Damn, I could never pass up a holiday where you ring someone's doorbell and they give you free candy."

"Eh, it wasn't my thing."

"What kind of child were you? Probably a real dork, huh?"

"Yup. Check the glasses."

"I should of guessed. Get beat up a lot?"

"Lost count." He rolled up the sleeve of his Yale sweatshirt and pointed out a scar of slightly wrinkled skin in sort of an elliptical shape on the crook of his elbow. "Billy Witmer, 1999. Cigarette lighter on my arm, second degree burn. Was black for a week"

"Ouch," Kim winced. "I've seen worse but damn. So you never dressed up in a dumb polyester costume your mom got at Party City on the Sale Rack at the last minute because you couldn't decide beforehand?"

"No."

"You were deprived. Did they make you dress up in school?"

"Kindergarten through fifth."

"What was your favorite costume?"

Logan twisted his mouth in thought. "Dracula."

"Favorite Halloween movie."

"Oh I can't remember…it's been a long time since I've sat down and watched a whole movie."

"C'mon, Logan. You're the coolest unemployed guy I've ever met who doesn't smoke pot all day. Not watch movies? Please."

He laughed. "Okay, okay. I think my favorite was _Child's Play_."

"That was the best!" Kim laughed. "Remember the part when Chuckie's in the elevator and the old woman says, 'Oh look, George. Some child left their doll.' and when she gets off the elevator she takes one more look at it and says—"

"'What an ugly doll'," Logan finished. 

"And Chuckie replies?"

"I believe it was something along the lines of, 'Fuck you'."

"Yes!" Kim clapped, laughing. "That movie cracked me up. I mean, it's a _doll_, right? I had Barbies scarier than that."

"I'll have to take your word for it."

"God," Kim stirred her Long Island iced tea. "It's so fun to have someone to talk to about pre-Pulse stuff."

"Yeah…" Logan said a little absent-mindedly. "So, Cal's your only sibling?"

"Unless my mother isn't telling me something, yes. Just me and Cal."

"Have you lived in Idaho all your life?"

"For as long as I can remember."

Logan's head snapped up at that point. What did she just say?

"Do you remember always being in Idaho?"

"I guess. I know I was born somewhere else, but I can't remember…my mother only told me a couple of times. I think she said it was Virginia."

"Oh?"

"I think I was Virginia and Cal was Minnesota. No…or was _I_ Minnesota?"

"Move around a lot?"

"Well, before my parents had kids they couldn't decide where to settle. See, my mother was born in Spain and lived in New Jersey when she came to America when she was about four. My father was English, moved to New York when he was eighteen to go to college. They couldn't find a happy medium. See, my mother wanted to stay in Jersey, my father wanted to go back to England. So they would move every so often, maybe once a month, to find a place they both agreed with. Cal and I are four years apart so there was a lot of space to move between the two of us. I guess Idaho was the big winner," she added sarcastically. "I'm due for a conversation with my mother anyway. I can ask her then. My mother's like an elephant—she never forgets."

*

"Well, Kimber-Leigh, you've got me on the phone," Gracia Addison sighed. "What do you want?"

"What makes you think I want something?" Kim rolled her eyes. She had the phone in one hand and a bowl of mac-and-cheese in the other, a light dinner. She was wearing  a loose white tank top and blue silk pajama pants, her hair in pigtails. 

"Every time you call me you want something. Why don't you call Calvin if you're broke?"

"Mom, I'm living in Foggle Towers. I work six days a week, twelve hours a day, sometimes more. I'm far from broke." Kim crinkled her eyebrows in frustration. 

"Well, what is it?"

"Do you remember what state I was born in?"

"Wyoming; why?"

"Wyoming?" she raised an eyebrow. She had already told Logan she'd never been to Wyoming. This was an odd turn of events.

"Yes. We lived in New York until your father found good work in South Dakota. Then we moved to Minnesota where Calvin was born two years later. Then we went to Wyoming, which was a big mistake. But yes, you were born there. Two months early, too! Then your father was transferred to Virginia when you were only one and a half weeks old and then when you were two we went to Idaho. Your father's job was a pain in the ass but what could I do but follow?"

"Oh…that's why…"

"Why what?"

"That's why I though I was born in Virginia."

"No. Wyoming. I remember."

"I just remember being in Idaho my whole life."

"Well you were almost there your whole life. Darby's your home, Kimber. It always will be." 

At this point Kim knew her mother was trying to persuade her to come home. "So you're positive you were in Wyoming when I was born?"

"I remember everything. God do I remember! Thirty hours of labor you put me through, Kimber. We almost had to use the jaws of life."

"Spare me. I'm eating, okay?"

Gracia gave a "God-grant-me-the-serenity" sigh and Kim could almost hear her roll her eyes. "Well, I'm on the phone already and mah-jongg doesn't start for another hour and a half. What's new?"

"Ummm…I met a guy."

"I don't like the sound of that. After all the 'guys' you've dated…"

"No, he's pretty cool," Kim replied quickly. "He knows _Child's Play_."

"Is that suppost to please me? How old is he?"

"Thirty-two," Kim mumbled.

"_Thirty-two?!_ Kimber-Leigh, that—" Gracia began to rant.

"Has nothing to do with what a cool guy he is," Kim interrupted. "Mom, he's really great. He takes me to lunch and we talk about movies and stuff and he collects wines…"

"The man collects wine. That makes me _real_ comfortable."

"Mom, will you listen?" Kim put her bowl down so she could be free to gesture with that unoccupied hand. "He's a _nice guy_. Plus we don't have a sexual relationship. I don't think it's even a _relationship_-relationship. His girlfriend died a while ago and I think he's still mourning over her."

"How long ago?"

"Four months."

"I don't know if I like this, Kimber-Leigh. You may be just a rebound thing."

"I am _so_ not a rebound thing. I told you weren't not like that! I think he really loved her, Mom, and he's very deeply scarred."

"He's wounded. You've got yourself a wounded man. That's even worse."

"Oh Jesus Christ, Mother."

Gracia paused. "You know what, Kimber? I'm not going to stop you. My word has never mattered before, so why should it now? Go ahead and keep your man and see how long it lasts. But don't come crying back to me."

Kim felt fury rise in her chest. She gripped the phone, closed her eyes and counted to ten. Then she said, "Mom, he's one of my best friends. Didn't you say it's best to marry your best friend?"

"That had better been a joke, Kimber-Leigh."

"It was so a joke," she picked up her bowl of macaroni again. "You and Daddy were friends first, right?"

"No, we weren't. He practically _stalked_ me until I went out with him. He came to my grandmother's booth every day at the marketplace in the Lower East Side just to chat me up."

"But it must've worked."

"It must've." Gracia paused. "Kimber, I really have to go. Isabel Hamilton is expecting me of mah-jongg in less than five minutes."

"Okay, Mom."

"And Kimber?"

"Yes, Mom?"

"Don't be such a stranger anymore."

*

After Logan dropped Kim off, he sat down and began to disconnect the exo so he could remove it.

She doesn't want to talk about the present. Only the past. The past, not the present. Pre-Pulse…Max new nothing about pre-Pulse…Kim seems to know everything. She's oblivious to the present. They did this. She was pumped full of pre-Pulse information…Manticore was pushed out. She has no recollection. She's drained. 

Feeling drained, Logan eased himself into his wheelchair, did some web searching and some downloading. Then he wheeled himself into the kitchen, made himself a little bowl of popcorn and returned to his office. He opened up a special digital viewer from his desktop. He pressed the start button, sat back, and watched _Child's Play_.


	9. Time

Kim began humming.

She'd never hummed in her life. She'd whistle, sing or the occasional "dum-de-dum-dum" or "La-da-da-dee-da" to go along with the beat to whatever song she was listening to. But humming? She'd never hummed an actual tune. 

The only humming she'd done was the monotone hum that belonged back in high school, when she and her best friend Gabrielle Finch would hum to annoy a teacher, any teacher, particularly substitutes. It would just be a very long, very flat, drawn out "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm."

During a point in class when the whole room was quiet—whether during a study hall or a silent read, Kim would take a deep breath and keep that single note for as long as she could.

"Kimber-Leigh Addison," the teacher would reprimand. "Stop that!"

"Stop what?" Kim asked quickly and innocently as Gabrielle would pick up the hum. 

"The humming."

"I don't hear a humming." At that, Gabrielle would stop.

The teacher would quiet down for a little bit, tug at their ear to make sure they were hearing correctly and then lay off. Kim would start again: "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm."

"Kimber-Leigh," the stern reprimand came again. "If I hear that one more time…"

"I'm not doing it," whined Kim as Gabrielle started one more time. "I swear I'm not doing it!"

"I heard the hum come fro—Gabrielle Finch!"

"What?" Gabrielle asked, exasperated. Kim picked up the hum again.

"You're humming too."

"Am not."

"_Kimber-Leigh!_"

"_What?_" Kim asked again, passing the hum to her friend.

And this would continue until Kim and Gabrielle got bored with the game or they both received detention. Usually it was the latter.

But these days, Kim found herself humming as she mopped, scrubbed or swept Harbor Lights, to _Waltz of the Flowers_ or Beethoven's _Second_ or _The Rose Adagio_ from _Sleeping Beauty_. All it took was a walk into Logan's office.

"Hey, Logan," she called as she entered the penthouse. "You chillin'?"

"In the office," Logan said, his voice muffled and his words slightly distorted. 

Faintly, Kim could hear soft music. "What are we listening to today?" she asked, entering the office. "Mozart? Bach?"

"Nope," Logan replied, not taking his eyes of the computer screen. He turned up the volume a little on his stereo. 

Kim listened closely. "It sounds like opera," she crinkled her nose.

"It is opera," Logan removed the pencil that had been clenched between his teeth. "It's French."

_Oh, _Kim thought._ That's why he sounded weird. That damn pencil._ Kim listened to the opera for awhile. It did sound French. "Who's singing?"

"Who, the primadonna?"

"The who?"

"The actress, I mean. Whenever there's an opera the female star is called the 'primadonna'."

"Oh. Yeah."

He cocked his head in thought and listened. "Laura Wisbauer"

"Oh." Kim had no idea who that was.

"It's _Les Miserables_; that means 'the miserable' in French. It's originally a dramatic play by Victor Hugo. He also wrote _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_."

"Quasimodo," Kim nodded with feign understanding. She had no idea that _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_ was a book. All she knew of was the animated Disney version.

"It was made into a stage musical, put on Broadway for many years. In 2008 it was made into an opera, completely in French. Little did they know what an omen it would prove to be. The Pulse hit a little bit after _Les Mis_ debuted on Broadway. Too bad, too. Big names were involved. Laura Wisbauer, Stearns Matthews, Sacha Kazan…"

"Did you see it live?" asked Kim, who'd never been to a live production of anything outside of a school musical. 

"Yeah, I did. But not willingly. I was dragged kicking and screaming. But at least I knew enough French to understand what was going on."

"You speak French?

"And Italian. Also a little Spanish and German to get by. My mother made me take French in school and stuck with it through college. I was on the French honor society, too."

There was a pause in dialogue as Laura Wisbauer's silken operatic voice filled the gap of silence:

"_Sous la pluie le trottoir brille comme l'arget…toutes les lumiéres son brumeuses dans la riviére…_" 

"What's she saying?" Kim asked.

"'In the rain, the pavement shines like silver…all the lights are misty in the river'."

"That's pretty. Who is she singing to?"

Logan shrugged. "No one in particular. Eponine—the character Laura plays— loves this guy Marius—Stearns Matthews' character, who doesn't love her but instead loves this other girl Cosette, played by Sacha Kazan, who was somewhat of Eponine's adopted sister."

"_Je l'aime mais tous les jours j'apprends. Toute ma vie que je seulement ai fait semblant…_"

"'I love him but every day I'm learning. All my life I've only been pretending'," Logan translated quickly. "Listen to this last line."

"_Je l'aime…je l'aime…je l'aime mais seulement sur mon propre,_" Laura Wisbauer sang, ending the operetta.

"'I love him but only on my own.'"

"How sad," Kim sighed.

"You're telling me. It's an awful feeling, isn't it?"

"What is?" Kim's heart skipped a beat..

"Loving someone who doesn't love you." Logan sat back in his office chair and shot Kim a painfully intimate look.

Kim thought back to childhood crushes and high school flings with certain boys who only became bigger boys. She'd never really loved them so much that it hurt. That was unknown territory for her. Not wanting to lose Logan's attention, she just nodded, "Yes, once."

"That's all it takes. Once. One person."

Using an analogy from an old movie, she blurted without thinking, "Penguins…penguins have one mate for it's entire existence. For the rest of its life."

Logan gave a light chuckle. "You know your Drew Barrymore."

Kim turned red. "I didn't think you knew that movie."

"It's one of the few I do know." Logan tipped back the chair as far as it would go and put his hands behind his head. He sighed, puffing out his cheeks and blowing out the air as if blowing up a balloon. "You wanna drink?"

Kim gave a tiny shrug. "Sure."

"Great. Hand me my wheelchair?"

Looking around the room, Kim frantically searched for the said chair. She brought it over to him and watched Logan ease himself out of his leather office chair and into the wheelchair.

"Oh don't look so shocked," he chastised her as he wheeled away.

"I'm sorry," Kim looked down for a second. "I didn't mean to stare."

"Never knew a paraplegic before?"

"No," she admitted. "Well, my grandma, before she died…she was in a wheelchair. She had really bad osteoporosis."

"I'm sorry to hear that. How long ago did she die?"

Kim wandered out of the office and into the kitchen. "Not long. About three years. They sent her body back to Spain after the funeral."

"Why wasn't she buried in America?" Logan handed Kim a cup of coffee.

Kim shrugged. "I guess she felt she'd always be a part of her in Spain. It was in her will that she was to be buried in Pamplona, her hometown. My grandfather died about eight years before she did and he too was sent there. Her parents and siblings were there. She had six children buried there too. She had a life there, I guess."

"I don't want to be buried with my parents," Logan declared. 

"Why?"

"I'd rather be cremated and shot into outer space. That way I can spend eternity among the stars."

"That sounds romantic," Kim commented between sips. She cocked her head and twirled some stray strands of hair between her fingers. "I never thought about how I'd spend eternity. Probably in heaven with Kurt Cobain. Or reincarnated into the body of a dove."

"Why a dove?" Logan stared into the swirling brown liquid in his mug, yearning for a shot of bourbon.

"They're a symbol of peace. Plus they can fly. I can be among the stars too."

Logan smiled a tight-lipped smile. 

"Do you ever visit your girlfriend?" Kim blurted before she could stop herself. 

Logan flinched slightly. "Visit?"

"You know…her…grave? Sorry—dumb; dumb question."

"No…it's…no, I don't. I don't even visit my own parents," Logan sighed. "I thought, why bother? Why linger over the past?"

"Why do you have their pictures up then?"

"So I don't have to visit the graves," Logan replied matter-of-factly. "I'm sorry, that was rude…I'm just…the wound is still open, you know?"

"Yeah. I know," Kim reached over and squeezed his hand. "When my dad died, I didn't like to visit his grave either because it reminded me that he was gone. But it gets better over time. That's what my Aunt Daphne said. And it works. Time heals everything, she said."

"Was she right?"

Kim scoffed, "How should I know? I never listen to Aunt Daphne." Then she laughed and punched Logan lightly on the arm. "I have to get back to Harbor Lights. See ya later."


	10. Kiss

A/N: I claim no rights to "The Hell Song" by Sum 41, as quoted at the end of this chapter.

Months passed by swiftly for Kim. Her day became routine for the first time since sixth grade: work, lunch with Logan, more work, chill with Logan, home, dinner, bed. Once in awhile she'd run into Asha but they didn't speak and Kim knew why. 

One night she had gotten off a bit early, went shopping and managed to pick up some popcorn, Oreos and chocolate-covered peanuts at a market and saw Asha's car in the parking lot. However, Kim pretended not to see it and went up to Logan's anyway, intending to have their now ritual bad-movie night; watch a really shoddy horror flick from the fifties called _Psycho_.

She was quiet and didn't open the door right away. Kim took off her sneakers and knelt by the door and cracked it open just enough so she could get an eye-line view. Unfortunately it wasn't much, but she could hear every word being said.

"_Why_ do you _bother _with her Logan?" Asha said nastily. 

"She's funny," Logan said matter-of-factly. "I like her."

"You probably just like her because she looks like what's-her-name." 

Logan got very quiet.

"I knew it." 

"Stop it. You don't know anything, Asha." 

"She's distracting you too. You've barely been doing any of the S1W work I asked you to do," Asha complained. 

Kim decided this moment was the right one to step into the conversation, "Hey Asha, would you like some baguettes to go with that _whine_?" she said, stepping inside. She took off her fringed 70's jacket and dropped it on a nearby kitchen chair 

"What are you doing here?" Asha came out of the office, hands on her hips.

"I live here."

Logan wheeled out of the office and parked his chair behind Asha to watch the show. 

"Not in this apartment you don't."

"Oh, boo-hoo. Someone call the whaaa-ambulance."

Stifling a laugh, Logan remained silent. He and Kim made eye contact briefly. 

"That's real mature." Asha rolled her eyes. 

"I just came by to say hello. So, hello, Logan. Good-bye Asha." Kim flashed an insane-like smile, all her teeth showing, her mouth stretched too wide and her eyebrows raised like Jack Nicholson.

"Logan!" Asha whined. "Are you going to let her talk to me like this?"

And Logan, who had been sitting in his wheelchair with a hand over his mouth to conceal a smile in complete silence, spoke, "Didn't I tell you she was funny?"

"Ugh," scoffed Asha. She grabbed her jacket off a nearby table and stomped out of the apartment, punctuating her exit with a sharp slam of the door. 

"Hm. Think I hit a nerve there?" Kim winked.

"Yeah. You bruised her ego pretty bad. You might see her at Harbor Lights tomorrow."

"Getting a whine-ectamy," laughed Kim as she went into the kitchen to put the junk food away.

"Or plastic surgery: an artificial personality replacement," Logan grinned, following her.

"Nah, no-can-do. Doctor Jackson already did an artificial personality replacement today and wouldn't ya know it? He ran out!"

"You can't get a transplant?"

"Oh, sure we could," Kim tossed the chocolate-covered peanuts into the refrigerator. "But, you know, finding a donor with the same self-esteem type would take months. Perhaps years."

"My God, Doctor," Logan said, in mock horror. "Does this mean what I think it means?"

"Yes, Nurse. Asha Barlow will die within a matter of days from: Egomania!" Kim lowered her voice for dramatic effect.

"Oh, whatever shall we do!" Logan raised his voice and flailed his arms like a drowning victim. 

"Dunno. Get her a nice casket?" 

There was a beat of silence. Then the two friends collapsed in laughter. Kim began laughing so hard she collapsed on the floor, her stomach throbbing. Logan was leaning on the kitchen table.

"Why…why are we…laughing…so hard?" he asked, tears running down his face.

"I know…it wasn't even that funny!" shrieked Kim between giggles. 

The laughter died down minutes later, leaving both friends heaving for air. 

"Kim?" Logan said, gasping. 

"Yeah?" Kim pulled herself off the floor using a nearby chair. 

"Can I…can I ask you something?" 

"I dunno. Depends."

"On what?"

"On whether or not I want to answer it," Kim laughed. 

"Can I kiss you?" 

Kim stopped laughing, like someone stepping on a garden hose and all the water had suddenly ceased its flow. "What?"

"Could I…I mean, forget it. Never mind."

"No. Logan…what?" Kim got up and knelt so she could see eye-to-eye with him. 

"I just wanted to know if I could kiss you."

"Why?" 

"Never mind. You don't have to."

"No!" she said, a little too quickly. "I…I want to. Kind of."

"Kind of?"

"Well, hell, Logan. You asked me a question and I gave you an answer."

Logan blinked. "You said you wanted to."

"I do."

"Then do it."

"No, you go first."

"No, you."

"No, you suggested it. You go."

"You accepted. You go."

"What are we, five?"

"Go!" 

"No, you go!" 

"No, you—" 

All of a sudden, Kim leaned in and planted a kiss on Logan's pink lips. Her hands went to his neck and pulled him closer to her. His arms found her waist and before they knew it, they were lip locked. 

_Oh God_, thought Logan. _I'm kissing my neighbor_. 

Kim was empty of thoughts, except, for some reason, an old punk rock song was floating through her head, but only the chorus. It didn't seem to fit what she was feeling…but it was stuck to in her memory…

__

"Part of me won't agree

Cus I don't know if it's for sure

Suddenly, suddenly

I don't feel so insecure

Everybody's got their problems

Everybody's says the same things to you

It's just a matter how you solve them

What else are we supposed to do?"


End file.
